“Sofia had the baby?” I asked.
“A little girl. They put a picture on the group chat,” Beck said. “You didn’t see it?”
I’d turned my phone off because I’d been obsessively checking to see if Parker had called or messaged. It was sending me half mad. “I must have missed it. A girl. Right. That’s nice.”
“Mate, you’re not very convincing,” Dexter said. “Anyone would think I told you they just bought a sofa.”
“I’m genuinely happy for them,” I said.
“Then tell your face,” Dexter said. “What’s got into you? I’ve never seen you like this.”
“I’m fine,” I lied. “I just have a lot going on at work and . . . you know, I’m not sure this thing with Parker is going to work out.”
“Did I just hear that right?” Beck said, coming back with champagne. “Parker is amazing and great for you. What’s the problem?”
“It’s nothing to do with her specifically.” She specifically was amazing; Beck was right. “I just don’t think I’m made to be with someone in the long term. I’ve always said that.”
Beck and Dexter both stayed silent. I looked up in time to see them exchange a glance.
“What?” I asked.
“I was just thinking we need Andrew,” Dexter said.
Beck cleared his throat. “Or Gabriel at least.”
“All of us probably need to be here,” Dexter added.
“I don’t need an intervention. I’m different from you lot. I never saw myself with anyone.”
“I know,” Beck said. “What’s brought this mood on?”
I thought back to the divorce papers I’d sent her yesterday. She needed space. She’d had a lot to take in. I hadn’t kept her safe. I understood it.
I explained to Beck and Dexter what happened when Parker found out Arthur had known about our ruse all along. And then how she’d completely overreacted about the email monitoring.
“But you barely knew her then. You owed your loyalty to Arthur.”
“Agreed. But at the same time, I could have told her after things developed between us, even though Arthur had asked me not to. She would have been angry at me either way, but I think the right thing to do would have been to encourage her to speak to her father before now.” I regretted that. It was a testament to her character that she went to tell her father the full story before she got her hands on her trust. I should have encouraged that at least.
“You should have asked her before you started monitoring her emails,” Beck said. “That’s kinda not okay.”
“She knew I was trying to get to the bottom of what was going on with the money transfers and the break-ins. I told her I put cameras in her house. And she knew I was monitoring her bank accounts. Of course I was monitoring her email.”
Beck sighed. “I don’t think she would have necessarily assumed you were monitoring her emails. It’s normal for you to hack into someone’s private messages but not normal for most normal people.”
Maybe I should have told her. I really hadn’t thought it was a big deal. I’d assumed she’d known.
“Okay, so you had a falling out,” Dexter said. “Isn’t it fixable?”
I went on to tell them about her ex and the would-be kidnapping attempt. “It’s completely understandable that she’d want her space after finding out something like that,” I said.
“Is it?” Beck asked. “What am I missing?”
“She’s been under a tremendous amount of stress—her life was potentially in jeopardy. The last thing she needs is me.”
“What are you talking about?” Dexter asked. “She needs you now more than ever.”
“She asked for space. I’m not going to argue with her. It’s completely understandable that our relationship wouldn’t weather this storm. Her ex was a nasty piece of work.”
“I’ve never seen you with a woman the way you were with Parker. Don’t your feelings for her make you want to fight for her?” Dexter said.
I let out a laugh. “My feelings about her are precisely why I don’t want to fight.”
“I’m not following you,” Beck said.
“Maybe we could get over this, but I don’t know if she could ever trust me again. But say we do, and then what? We build our lives together and then something hits us that we can’t recover from. Where does that leave us?”
“So you’re saying leave now because it won’t hurt as much?” Dexter said.
I shrugged. There was nothing to add. Dexter had boiled it down to its core.
“No,” Beck said. “If she’s the kind of woman you’d never recover from losing—that’s the one you have to chase. That’s the woman you have to fight for.”
“Why?” It made no sense to me. Better I protect us both from getting our hearts ripped out and our lives destroyed at a later date.
“Well first of all, because what you’re feeling right now—that snarling dog of regret that howls at you every night—isn’t going to go away.”